I just had the pleasure today of interviewing Nintendo of America's Vice President of Corporate Affairs, Denise Kaigler. Some of you may not have heard of her, but she has taken over the position once held by Perrin Kaplanand she certainly knows her stuff.
Unfortunately, during the interview, my recording device decided to have a nervous meltdown. As a result, we are unfortunately not able to give you a transcript; but we still did get some information from her to relay to you.
* First of all, as you may have read in our exclusive newsbite a short time ago, the famed "Wii-kly Update" is changing its name to "Nintendo Download" starting April 6, after the DSi releases. It will include WiiWare, Virtual Console (including Arcade), and DSiWare announcements.
* I also asked her about how easy Wii is to find on shelves now. She told us the recent availability of Wii on store shelves is a direct result of Nintendo's pledge to increase stock by 50% in stores, and the out-of-stock rate at retailers is now only 10%. Nintendo unsurprisingly has no plans to reducing the price of the Wii, even in light of the Xbox360 Arcade's low price point. As it's still selling strong, there is no reason to do so.
* The number of Japanese titles that don't make it over has been a burning question in a number of folks' minds, so I asked about how that works. Denise told me Nintendo of America actually has very-little-to-no say about which titles escape Japan to go worldwide; NCL makes all decisions when porting games to new regions.
* Nintendo's E3 2009 press conference will be held in the a.m. on June 2nd. There is a possibility it will not be held at the Kodak theatre; but no further information was provided.
I also wanted to mention, though Denise didn't have anything for me on this point, that I ran into Nate Bihldorff prior to Iwata's keynote yesterday and inquired about a possible release for Professor Layton's second game in the States. (This was before Level-5 president Akihiro Hino confirmed that they were, in fact, working on localizing the second game for North American and European releases.) Bihldorff, of course, wouldn't confirm this in any waybut he did say "have faith." And so we do.
